Let us recall some of the various periods when the now familiar psalms of David first burst from his lips as he touched his harp. The son of Jesse probably acquired his skill on the instrument by practice, as he sat watching his sheep in the pastures by Bethlehem, when he was a beautiful ruddy-checked boy. David's fleecy charge may have been his only auditors when first the sweet strain arose which has since been echoed by millions of human hearts. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters." But the first occasion on which we have certain knowledge of David's playing on his favourite instrument, is when his skill soothed the deep depression of the half-mad king. "David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." Gladly would we know what words were joined to the exquisite music which had such power to lighten deep gloom; perhaps no words were then heard, yet how often has a perturbed spirit been soothed by such breathings as these: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." David appears to have taken his harp with him into the gloomy recesses of Adullam, as the companion and solace of his flight; for this is the strain of his psalm "when he fled from Saul in the cave." "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in Thee: yea, in the shadow of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast . . . Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake early." Under very different circumstances did the monarch of Israel strike the sounding chords of his harp when the Ark of God was carried in triumph from Kirjathjearim: "And David and all Israel played before God with all their might and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets." Then indeed rose a sound of rejoicing. "The singers went before, and the minstrels followed after; in the midst were the damsels playing on the timbrels." According to David's own striking metaphor, he who had "lien among the pots" had become as "the wings of a dove, covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold;" and the harp of the king swelled the glorious chorus, "Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered: let them also that hate Him flee before Him!" But dark shadows were to succeed the glorious sunshine. Happier was David as the fugitive in the cave than as the king in the palace. When the guilty but penitent psalmist bent over his harp, the tears of the stricken sinner, the bereaved father, may have fast dropped on its strings as he uttered the cry for pardon and grace: